Pages: 81
Goes well with: Dark chocolate and red strawberries
Vampire Bytes isn’t exactly Wuthering Heights, but it rhymes, and it has a guy, a girl, love, passion and pain, so it’s sort of the same.
Heath Clifford (what a wonderful name, and even more wonderful as its different variations appear in the story) is a computer game addict. He’s spent so much time playing Vampillion at night that he’s now convinced he’s actually become a real vampire. And he has his reasons, such as hugging gravestones, sensing the blood coursing in his girlfriend’s veins, and failing to see himself in a mirror that just might be an illusion.
But the lines between illusion and reality blur in this fast-moving tale. Clothes come off and strew the floor pretty rapidly, but the sensual splendors are taken slowly. (Not a book to leave lying around on your computer for the children to find.) The dark underworld of Goth nightclubs blends with zany home and family, mysterious bookshops and computerized adventure, creating a fascinating balance.
Brad and Heath are friends who spend their working lives in adjacent cubicles. Lacking privacy, they converse about life, love, and vampire games, in a relationship that’s entirely plausible and pleasantly familiar from my own office days. Meanwhile, Greta is almost the girl next door, and definitely too good to be true to Heath’s expectations. The trouble is, as Heath learns more about vampirism, Greta, who plays the part of a resident vampire at her brother’s nightclub, learns more about Heath than she ever expected.
Truth will out, but which truth, and what will be the consequences?
Vampire Bytes is a slightly creepy and totally zany tale which takes its own sweet bite out of the computer gaming world, and leaves both reader and characters satisfied.